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I’ve always been able to enter into the season of Advent fairly easily as the days got shorter and weather colder and I felt free to give myself permission to join with Mary’s soul in the joyful expectation of our Lord’s birth and also the Second Coming. I fed off of the anticipation and appreciated the welcomed quietness of the season.

This way of praying became a bit more difficult after being married four years ago and trying to get pregnant. It started to feel as though I was in a constant “Advent” season, but also “Lent” as well: a fair mixture of waiting and suffering simultaneously. There was a serious lack of joy revolving around our infertility. Even the joy of Easter has been hard for me to enter into over the course of our marriage as it seemed like the spiritual joy was non-transferable to our reality in this area.

There is a lot of beautiful writing and reflection circling the internet and devotional world about the season of advent in regards to “waiting in hopeful expectation.” Yet, how do I enter into this call if I do not have hopeful expectation and am sick of waiting? Does this make me a bad Catholic?

Let’s break this down and define our terms:

Wait: stay where one is or delay action until a particular time or until something else happens

Hope: a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen; a feeling of trust

Expectation: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future

So basically it sounds like the call can be translated into: “stay and trust in the desire you have, believing that something will happen in the future.”

Stay. Stay? My first reaction is why would I want to STAY in my infertility?! The dreaded day in and day out reminder of my weakness and bodily imperfection; the reminder that I am a broken human being. Lord, are you asking me to stay in this?

Yes.

This is uncomfortable. This is a place of vulnerability and of hurt and disappointment. Why would I want to stay here? I want to run from this dark hole in my heart that I attempt to fill every day with something…

Be still.

As I meditate on this call the Lord is asking of me, I am reminded that our Mother Mary stayed in this place of uncertainty, being uncomfortable, vulnerable, and seemingly unlivable conditions during advent. She stayed.

Suddenly, I find myself asking for the grace of Mary to remain here. Even though I am not wrestling with these thoughts and feelings while I am pregnant as she was, I can still relate. Lord, give me the grace to stay in the uncomfortable, in the hurt and disappointment. I ask You to meet me there.

He is also asking me to stay in my desire, to trust. What was my desire? I surely desire to have a child and be healed of infertility. This was a screaming desire of my heart! However, I felt as though He was asking me to go deeper. What was my ultimate desire?

Eternal life. If I am honest, this ultimately trumps my desire for a child.

I felt as though He was asking me to stay in my desire for eternal life, not stay in my desire for a child. And I have to choose to believe that this will happen someday in the future, as my hopeful expectation.

Suddenly, this was making sense to me. On the surface, Advent could be seen as a season of waiting for healing and pregnancy, however, the Lord wanted to remind me of the deeper meaning and truth. Ultimately, I can only wait in hopeful expectation, for eternal life. This is what He promises us. He doesn’t promise me a child, or even healing.

He promises me eternal life.

“O Key of David,

opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom:

come and free the prisoners of darkness!”

The “O” Antiphon for Dec. 20

This post can also be viewed at springsinthedesert.org. Springs in the Desert is a new Catholic ministry devoted to helping women and couples struggling with infertility to process and move beyond their grief to find the fruitfulness God has planned for their marriage.